Alongside a settlement with Deutsche Telekom and its majority-owned Magyar Telekom Nyrt unit, the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Elek Straub, the former chairman and chief executive of Magyar Telekom;Andras Balogh, the former director of central strategic organization; and Tamas Morvai, the former director of business development and acquisitions.

The SEC accused them in a civil complaint (pdf) of scheming and bribing government officials in Macedonia and Montenegro in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars making such payments for business purposes.

In their joint motion to dismiss, filed earlier this week, the co-defendants argue the Manhattan federal court, where the SEC filed the suit, has no jurisdiction over the allegations, saying the alleged misconduct has no nexus to the U.S.

“It would be inconsistent with traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice to require them to defend this action in the United States,” the filing says.

Moreover, the filing cites the SEC’s own complaint when saying it lacks jurisdictional precedent, quoting the SEC’s attempt to “break new ground.”

A spokesman for the SEC declined to comment. Deutsche Telekom and Magyar Telekom agreed in December 2011 to pay $95 million in civil and criminal penalties relating to the case.

The motion to dismiss filed by the co-defendants also argues the accusations made by the SEC are beyond the statute of limitations of five years, saying the complaint itself was filed more than five years after they had all left the company.

And the filing says the SEC “fails to allege facts that support its conclusions” that the defendants violated the FCPA.

Under the limited amount of case law revolving around who counts as a foreign official, the motion argues that the complaint in the case does not satisfactorily argue that the alleged bribes in Macedonia went to foreign officials.

In addition, the FCPA requires the use of U.S. interstate commerce to make the bribes, and the motion claims the only attempt made by the SEC to show such a violation is email passing through the U.S. for technological reasons.

“This case represents the first time, to our knowledge, that the SEC has pursued the theory that the happenstance of a data manager’s routing through or storing emails on a server allegedly located in the United States – unbeknownst to the defendant – constitutes a ‘corrupt’ use by the defendant of United States interstate commerce under the FCPA’s anti-bribery provision, when those emails allegedly were sent only to and from foreign countries and foreign nationals,” the filing says.

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